The Tragic Price Tag for an Intelligence-Driven War

The CIA was given the lead in America’s alleged war of retribution, allowing the agency to secretly lead the direction of the war, using false flag direction and by supplying the new “intelligence” documents that would support the secret actions, in order to fuel succeeding phases of the war, straight into the heartland of Central Asia. The CIA sets the pattern in this war that others must follow, even the Pentagon. Covert spy networks supply the individual pieces of new “intelligence” that determine both the air missions and those conducted by Special Forces teams (under CIA leadership, of course).

The local informants who are recruited on the ground in Pakistan and Afghanistan determine targeting for drones and bombers without concern for collateral damage, only for the “twenty pieces of silver” that they will receive for calling-in airstrikes upon their neighbors. If wrong actions are taken, or if there is extensive “collateral damage” in the raids, then it is the agency’s faulty target acquisition methods that are to blame. How reliable could such amoral spies be, when they would willingly do this to their fellow man?

This is the type of scum that the agency has working for it, calling the shots for the Navy and Air Force. It is little wonder that so many wedding parties and funerals have been hit. In the latest bombing catastrophe, over 125 people were killed, many of them civilians, on the strength of one low-life informant, who would sell-out his neighbors for a dollar ( Sole Informant Guided Decision On Afghan Strike).

The spy lords’ complex plans have come-up against the barrier of human morality and the decency factor. The scum-of-the-earth types who power their warped war plans and the amoral spymasters have fostered an air of moral outrage that is blowing over the Western alliance, threatening to dissolve support for “the mission.” Pentagon planners know that this war, just like Vietnam, is an immoral war that is being fought without credible cause. There no longer exists a national consensus, based on fear, in search of retribution for a horrendous act of terror; support for the war in Afghanistan is shaky and will not survive an expose’ of war crimes. CIA control of this war threatens to unravel the Pentagon’s best laid plans.

Each civilian disaster brings a pause to the war, as shock sets-in and the Pentagon issues its standard denial of responsibility, or the claim that no civilians were killed at all (remember My Lai?). Each pause gives the American people and our European allies time to reflect on the tragedy that we have caused in our willingness to blindly follow the path that Cheney, Bush and now Obama have set before us. It is becoming increasingly clear to reasonable individuals that there is no reason for continuing the destruction in Afghanistan, or for widening that war into Pakistan, or beyond.

With the slaughter of helpless civilians becoming a regular occurrence, the CIA’s mistakes and its basic inhumanity have produced sufficient reasons for ending the war. Americans are rapidly becoming enraged at the slaughter and brutality that we see our own bombers unleashing upon the Afghan people, repeating the mistakes made by the Soviets, matching their barbarity note for note. This brought us to our feet once, in support of the original mujahedeen; it will rouse us again into helping the Afghans today, forcing Obama to cancel his great plans and leave Afghanistan.

For all their technical expertise and in spite of the roster of geniuses among their ranks, the CIA’s most devious plans are made or broken by simple human nature, dependent upon whether they go against human nature or work with it. This tendency to misjudge basic human nature was the direct cause for the Soviet defeat in 1989, just as it will be for us today. The Western propaganda campaign that sustained the original anti-Soviet operation was fuelled by moral outrage over the plight of the victims of the Soviet air campaign, many of whom were the elderly, the sick, women and children, missing eyes and limbs. The Afghans garnered global sympathy because of this testimony, just as they are today.

No matter how much Gen. McChrystal tries to contain today’s outrage and to direct it away from allied forces, airstrikes on civilians will continue to happen, just as ground forces will continue using overwhelming force where they should not. He can never truly protect the Afghan people until American forces either withdraw, or stop pushing combat operations into their villages and into their homes.